View full sizeRandy Rasmussen/The OregonianMarqueese Royster, a former Lake Oswego High School football player who transferred to Lakeridge High School for his sophomore year, and his mother, Annalisa Royster, filed a police report on Feb. 24 after seeing a racist tweet directed at him from an anonymous account.

Disparaging messages from anonymous Twitter accounts, one of which targeted an African-American student with racist language, have led to the suspension of three Lake Oswego High School students, the reprimand of several football players and a Lake Oswego police investigation.

Sophomore Marqueese Royster, a former Lake Oswego High School football player who transferred to Lakeridge High School this semester, and his mother, Annalisa Royster, filed a police report on Feb. 24 after seeing the Twitter posts the day before. The anonymous Twitter accounts have since been deleted.

According to the police report, an anonymous Twitter account named "Lake NoNegro" posted a message directed at Royster's Twitter account using a racial slur. Another account, created using the vice principal's name, also targeted Royster.

The suspensions are the harshest punishments the high school has doled out for cyberbullying since a 2007 law required schools to adopt a policy on electronic harassment and encouraged them to act on the practice.

The incident comes three months after Lake Oswego finished up a perfect season with the state 6A football championship. Police and school officials determined that the offensive messages were reposted by several of Royster's former teammates, including three varsity players and three sub-varsity players.

Police investigated the incident and forwarded the results to Vice Principal Dave Lovelin. "Mr. Lovelin said he reprimanded all of the students involved and involved some of their parents. He also brought in the athletic director and football coach, who reprimanded the students for their behavior."

Lake Oswego football coach Steve Coury said the students who received the most severe discipline were suspended not for the content of the tweets, but for setting up an imposter Twitter account using Lovelin's name. They later tweeted "kind of crude things about Dave," Coury said.

Coury said he wasn't aware that one of the messages from a separate account contained a racial epithet. He declined to identify the players who were suspended, but noted that one is African-American.

Coury said students today communicate "in a world for everybody to see" without considering the consequences. "So there's all kinds of stupidity, stupid things said. It used to be, when I was growing up, we'd be on the phone. We'd say some dumb things, but it wasn't all over the place."

Royster, who moved from Portland's Jackson Middle School to Lake Oswego Junior High in seventh grade, said he never felt like he quite fit in at Lake Oswego High. His freshman year had gone well, partly because older African-American players invited him to team outings, but after some of those players graduated, he said teammates became less welcoming.

He and his mother speculated some of the isolation stemmed from jealousy – the defensive lineman has attracted attention from college scouts and recently earned a spot on Team USA's 17-and-under roster. He said he has adjusted well to Lakeridge.

Royster said he had never been the target of racial slurs while attending Lake Oswego High School and was "shocked and surprised" by the messages. He said he believed the anonymity of the Internet had allowed students to say things they would never say to him in person.

Experts agree that anonymity, as well as a youth culture saturated with online communications and social media, have fueled the rise of cyberbullying. "It's the technology that is very impulsive," said Parry Aftab, the executive director of the Internet safety group WiredSafety. "Seventy percent of cyberbullying occurs anonymously or with the use of a forged or stolen account."

High profile cases have helped push cyberbullying laws onto the books across the country. Oregon passed its own in 2007, requiring school districts to create policies prohibiting cyberbullying. Lake Oswego's policy gives administrators broad latitude in enforcement, encompassing electronic harassment that "substantially disrupts or prevents a safe and positive educational or working environment."

"We don't go on every student's Facebook or Twitter account," Plato said. "But when it becomes disruptive to the school -- and this is -- it becomes part of school jurisdiction."

Plato has said identifying the students who authored the racist tweets has become more difficult because the accounts have been deleted, and students have not yet come forward with help. He would not speculate on what punishment awaits those students if they are identified, but said the administration would “take it very seriously, just as we’ve taken this whole thing very seriously.”

For now, the Roysters are unsure whether they’ll ever find out who was responsible for the tweets, since the administration and police have refused to release the identities of those who were suspended.

Annalisa Royster said she and her son are still waiting for the shock to wear off. “It’s really disturbing that he has to deal with this in 2012.” Reporter Jerry Ulmer contributed to this story.